Biodiversity levels crashing - 8th November 2021

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, new data reveals. It has an average of about half its biodiversity remaining, placing it in the bottom 10 percent globally, and last among the G7 group of nations.

Biodiversity refers to the biological diversity of all living organisms on Earth, and how they fit together in the web of life to create oxygen, water, food, medicine and numerous other elements. A figure of 90 percent is considered the ‘safe limit’ to prevent the world from slipping into environmental disaster, according to researchers. However, the current global average of 75 percent is considerably lower.

Professor Andy Purvis, research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, explains that biodiversity means considerably more than attractive scenery:

“It’s also what provides us with so many of our basic needs. It’s the foundation of our society.”

The Museum has put together a tool called the Biodiversity Trends Explorer, which estimates the percentage of natural biodiversity that remains worldwide, and in individual countries. The UK’s low ranking position in the table is linked to the industrial revolution, which transformed the landscape.

The assessment was released ahead of two global UN conferences. China, which contains nearly 10 percent of plants and 14 percent of animal species on Earth, is holding the Biodiversity Conference just ahead of Scotland, which sees the COP26 Climate Conference open in Glasgow.

Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human existence. Since 1970, there has been on average almost a 70 percent decline in the mammal, birds, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations. It is thought that almost a quarter of animal and plant species are threatened with extinction.

These conferences' outcomes will seriously impact the healthy survival of the planet and of humankind in the next decades, the effects of which are likely to last until the end of the century.